I’m an addict, and my drug of choice is daydreaming. Has been from a very early age. If I’m not actively involved in a conversation with another person, or engrossed in a work of fiction, I’m locked in my head beating up bad guys or taking over the world–or both. I spend most of my day thinking about being someone else someplace else. So, naturally, when I started writing, all I was doing was writing what I had experienced in my head.

To tell the truth, I’ve been writing far longer than I wanted to be a writer. I think I started writing when I was in junior high school (I particularly remember a story about a group of kids my age who were trapped in their school, which had been sucked into a kind of limbo universe where nothing existed but the school—yeah, I was a weird kid). I never took it seriously at all. Making up stories was just something I did, like other kids doodled cartoons on their notebooks.

At some point in my teenage years (probably around eighteen or nineteen) I wondered what it would be like to get sucked into an alternate world with magic. Not original, I know, but bear with me. I started going through scenarios in my head as to how I would react in that situation. In true Walter Mitty fashion, I wasn’t really myself, but a better, braver, prettier, cleverer version of myself. At some point in the daydream, I got the weird notion that I would get imprisoned in a mountain. This brought up a question.

What would a magically inclined person be like if they were locked in a dark, underground prison, alone, for hundreds of years? How would they cope? What would they do to get out, and what would they be like when they did?

From that kernel was born my first trunk novel.

It was while writing that book, that I realized how much I really love writing. I’d been doing it forever, already. And I decided that, since it didn’t look like I was going to be rockstar, I’d be a writer.

Just about all my stories have started out just like that first trunk novel. What would it be like to experience this thing that I’ve never experienced, to be this person I’ve never been? Using myself as a starting point makes it easier to get into the idea. A dozen or so scenario’s later, and the idea has a life of its own. Those are the stories I end up writing down.

To be honest, what was in my head was influenced by real events in my life, books I read, music I listened to, and movies and television I had seen, all mashed up in my subconscious and bubbling out in my own unique way. Now that I think about it, the things in my head always had a tendency to work as stories because, after growing up sequestered in my room, reading fiction, I have a very twisted view of the world. I get frustrated when life doesn’t function like a piece of fiction (I’ve come to realize that I walk around listening to music constantly because I feel the need for my life to have a soundtrack—yeah, I’m still a weird kid).

This odd way of looking at the world sort of perpetuates my need to daydream. Life isn’t structured in three acts. We don’t get to skip the boring parts to keep the momentum going. People aren’t characters with understandable motivations.

Real life is complicated.

But dang it, it shouldn’t be! And so, I escape this nonsensical reality to my crazy made up worlds.

I am the first to admit that this is not a healthy way of looking at the world. But I ask you: How else am I going to experience life as a ridiculously rich and famous, deliriously beautiful, impossibly crafty, immortal vampire mage who travels through time to other planets in parallel universes?

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Imagine growing up in a family where reading was never encouraged and was viewed as being lazy. Where farm chores and homework were the priorities. My father occasionally read westerns and Archie comics and then only after we were in bed. My mother just read recipes. Now, imagine the frustrations of a child whose imagination is so taken by the rich worlds in books that she wants to write but must suppress that desire and limit it only to school assignments.

What did I love to read? I still remember Dick and Jane’s antics in the grade one picture books –  ‘See Dick run. Run Dick run!’ – those first words excited my tiny heart and showed me the power of words on paper. Then came rhyming and Dr. Seuss filled my world – ‘One fish two fish, red fish blue fish’. By grades five and six, I was sneak reading the mysteries of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys on the bus ride home – a book a day. Somewhere in junior high school, I discovered science fiction, fell in love with it and then got into trouble with teachers because my imagination and verbosity were greater than assignments demanded. When I took a degree in English and drama, I had relatives who shunned me for years.

Perhaps I should have quit then and for a few years life took over and I almost did. But I always dabbled and always loved reading. So, what changed? What gave me the courage to write and to overcome all the discouraging influences? Where did I find the confidence to achieve my goal of mastering and communicating in my second language? Oh yes, English isn’t my first language and throughout my life, I’ve had a desire to master it and rarely feel I have. Yet, one book, one writer gave me the courage to pursue my dream wholly – to throw myself into it with a modicum of hope to succeed. I owe my courage to J.K. Rowling.

When I read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, I thought that if she could do it, so could I!”. Her life story, her courage to write and  her perseverance to find a publisher were the inspiration I needed. Since then, I’ve written many wild tales. I can write! My childhood desire to engage in worlds so far removed from reality, to master their voices and breathe life into them in words not my own has blossomed!

Which authors inspire me today? They all do as do the readers who buy their books. Everyone who has the courage to pen their imaginations, to give life to new worlds and voices, and to all our readers who encourage us, I give you my heartfelt thanks.

Cheers and happy writing (and reading too)!

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I’ve said in previous Fictorian blogs that I’ve been both an omnivorous and a ravenous reader since as far back as I can remember.  Oddly enough, though, as I’ve also previously mentioned, I was never someone who knew at an early age that I was going to be a writer.  I’m not sure why, other than I remember being tremendously in awe of anyone who could write a whole book, and never dreamed that I could do that.

I did, however, begin wishing that I could write a book.  And I can tell you exactly when it happened.  In early 1963 I was in 6^th grade in a school on Ben Eielson Air Force Base, just south of Fairbanks, Alaska.

The Scholastic Book Program was in full swing by then, and every month or so a brochure would come out listing books we could order.  I think it was in January that one listing in the brochure caught my eye.  It had an intriguing descriptive blurb, an intriguing title—Catseye—and a cool cover.

It was by Andre Norton, whom I’d never heard of before, but that was okay—I hadn’t heard of a lot of authors.  I checked the space for it on the order form, and waited.

The day that it arrived, I brought the book home, plopped myself on my bed, opened the cover, and found myself lost in a strange and amazing new universe.

I had just encountered my first real science fiction.  Eleanor Cameron’s The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and Edward Eager’s Half Magic, charming though they were, lost me to a universe of interstellar civilizations, space travel, warfare, telepathy, sapient animals, and aliens.  To this day, if I’m asked the “you’re alone on a desert island and you can only have the books of one author” question, Norton would be a finalist in my short list.

Andre Norton was actually Alice Mary Norton.  She began writing at a time when it was very difficult for women authors to be taken seriously, and she used the standard tactic of the time to overcome that problem—she adopted a pseudonym.  She actually used at least three over her career, but almost all of her output was published under Andre Norton.  Bibliography  She did eventually legally change her name to Andre Alice Norton.

Norton was a superlative story teller, and had a gift for creating characters that even today I connect with.  Whether it was space opera, or earthbound adventure, or historical fiction, or fantasy, a book by her sucked me in.  I would read by flashlight at night in order to finish a book after bedtime.  And it was her work, first and foremost, that lit in me not the desire to write, but the wish that I could write like that.

Of course, once I found real science fiction, I started hunting for as much of it as I could find.  The libraries on the base had some, and I found Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Lester del Rey, and a lot more.  But the only other author who grabbed me like Norton did at that age—the only other author who resonated with me like Norton—was Robert A. Heinlein.

Both writers plotted gripping stories.  Both could write very taut fiction that moved at a fast pace, yet had depth and characterization.

Both writers excelled at writing “coming of age” stories, which even today is probably the single most popular plot form in the young adult market.

It would be hard to find two better exemplars of novel writing for either adult or young adult markets.

But at that age, that wasn’t part of my thinking.  I learned from them by osmosis, as I dove into their books again and again and again, reading and re-reading ad infinitum but never ad nauseam.  And both of them, more than any other writers at the time, fueled that wish that I could be a writer.

To pick a work from each that connected with me very strongly, take Catseye from Norton and Between Planets by Heinlein.

Both are coming of age stories.  Both are not routine run-of-the-mill plots.  And both are not “talk-down-to-the-kids” stories.  Both include violence and death.  Toward the end of his book, Heinlein’s protagonist is asked to man a “dead-man switch”—to commit suicide, in other words—to ensure that a space vessel is destroyed rather than captured if a battle doesn’t go their way.  In Norton’s book, her protagonist is offered the return of a family treasure and heritage for which he has longed all his life, but only at a monumental and deadly price.

I can’t describe to you the impact those two novels had on me.  I literally cannot communicate the feelings I had when I finished each one of them, the least of which was, “Oh, wow.”

But with each reading and re-reading of books by these two masters of their craft, that wish that I could write grew, until finally, sixteen years after I opened the cover to Catseye the first time, it became a desire to write, and I first set pen to paper—literally.  It has been a long road since then to where I am as a writer today, and it’s one I don’t think I would have walked without the influence of Andre Norton and Robert A. Heinlein.

Thank you both.

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Like so many born in the sixties, I was raised on television. In my case it was mostly cartoons, and I reveled in them because they took me “someplace else.” Even as a preschooler I found the real world to be banal. Something was always missing from the universe around me, a sense of purpose in crisis. To put it bluntly, suburbia was—and still is—a hive, one with few predators beyond shady car salesmen and cut-throat roofing companies.

By design, the culture of suburbia suppresses any sense of crisis, attempting to bubble-wrap existence at every turn. It strives to create cogs born and bred for the great machine that is our society. That’s not a condemnation, merely an observation. Such were my early stomping grounds, and many of us—particularly devotees of geekdom—have our roots in just such culture.

Interestingly, there is a misapprehension among many Americans raised in suburbia that the Chinese character for “crisis” is the same as the one for “opportunity.” While this is inaccurate, I believe many of us cling to the notion because it speaks to an inner-self that few ever explore in their daily lives. It is this same inner-self that appreciates the film Fight Club and why most of us remember the phrase, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger,” probably learned from the 1982 film Conan rather than from having read Nietzche.

These things speak to us because we’re all seeking something, and in suburban society we can only find it in fiction and films depicting the fantastic. What we seek is import and wisdom—a sense of participating meaningfully in great events that shape the fabric of existence—whilst going mindlessly along in whatever daily grind holds sway over our mortgages and rent payments. Yet we desperately hunger for the wisdom of the ages, learned through epic events that threaten our sense of existence, whatever that may be.

During my formative years—and thanks to my brother—I discovered a handful of authors who stole me away from the banal. Within their tales I was carried to the stars and bore witness to great events, learning from them as if I had been an active participant. I discovered places like Heinlein’s Mars and Zelazny’s Amber. I cut my imaginative teeth on stories spun by Asimov and Clarke, delving deeply into tomes like The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume I (printed in 1971 and sitting on a shelf next to me as you read this). They were my first real exposure to import and wisdom, and done in a way that was both intriguing and meaningful to a tenant of the banal.

Philosophers—and they were philosophers—like Campbell, Sturgeon, Bradbury, and Leiber shaped what was a very young, hungry, and naive mind. I was the chalice to their wine, and what I learned between those pages read so long ago still shapes who and what I am today. Zelazny taught me what a shadow walk is and how to appreciate the significance of journey, even when I’m just hiking the Rockies. Heinlein gave me a comprehension of what it means to “grok” and helped me understand why a human should know how to “change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.” Thanks to Laumer I understand the difference between men of action and men of sophistry; I comprehend what loyalty is and have a sincere sense of duty in the face of personal sacrifice.

I am a son of many such fathers… and mothers like Le Guin and Sheldon who helped me understand the differences between the sexes and, more importantly, how shameful inequality in any society really is. I have many more such parents, but you get the point. These thinkers, these visionaries, shared with us their distinct notions of humanity, speculating upon “what if” we were to take current societal constructs and follow them to their inevitable conclusions. Either that or they took societal norms, turned them upside down, and held them up to the light for all to see.

And thus, having set out upon this journey of becoming an author in my own right, I find myself editing my second manuscript. In it I alter American history and explore bigotry, zealotry and sexism. I hold them up to the light and expose hypocrisy. I cast in harsh light those who would discriminate and subjugate, dealing with them via the heavy hand of a six-gun-packing privateer. It’s pure fantasy, to be sure, and pulpy, but under the surface there’s a theme of equality, of treating with other sentient beings in precisely the same manner we wish to be treated.

I can’t imagine that my work will be as highly regarded as those great visionaries who influenced me, but I can aspire to walk in their footsteps and—perhaps—make my own small contribution to what Arthur in Excalibur referred to as “future memory.”

It is a dream I have.

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Quincy Allen has been published in multiple anthologies, online and print magazines, as well as in one omnibus. His steampunk version of Rumpelstiltskin is under contract with Fairy Punk Studios, and he’s written for the Internet radio show RadioSteam. His novel Chemical Burn—a finalist in the Rocky Mountain Writers Association Colorado Gold Writing Contest—was first published in June 2012, and has been picked up by Fantastic Journeys Publishing. His new novel, Jake Lasater and the Blood Curse of Atheon, will be on sale this summer, and he’s writing an off-world steampunk-esque series. You can follow his ongoing exploits on Facebook and at his website.

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In retrospect, the signs of my becoming a fantasy/sci-fi writer and proud geek were all there from an early age. The joy I felt Christmas morning when Santa brought my older brother and me Castle Grayskull—the perfect backdrop to any number of adventures with He-Man and She-ra. The summers spent in my friend’s backyard, acting out the rousing adventures of Link from The Legend of Zelda. Perhaps the most damning piece of evidence is the note I found from my late grandmother, which references a story I wrote at the tender age of five and titled “Battle for the Unknown Universe.”

Despite these auspicious beginnings, however, I remained mostly uninterested in fantasy or sci-fi through middle school. I was always an avid reader, but my books of choice were standard fare for the time—stories about girls and their horses, or girls and their babysitting clubs

All this changed in seventh grade, when my dad introduced me to a series entitled The Lord of the Rings.

I can hear you already. “Oh, wow. A fantasy writer who was inspired by Lord of the Rings. I’ve never heard that before.” And I get it. Fantasy is a field rife with Middle-Earth wannabes. In some cases, they are great novels all their own, adding their own unique perspective to the genre, and in others, well… not so much.

There’s a reason for all the Tolkien love, and quite simply, it’s because Lord of the Rings is awesome, in the truest sense of the word. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I soon discovered that my dad didn’t bring home these books for me, the avid reader of the family. No, he bought them for my older brother, a high-schooler who played guitar in a heavy metal band and whose reading, I was fairly certain, consisted primarily of lyrics to Poison songs.

Surely my father was suffering from early-onset senility, thinking that my brother was the better candidate for this intimidating-looking series whose covers promised adventure and magic.

This couldn’t stand. So I, in an effort to show my misguided father who was clearly the smarter sibling, decided I would be the one to read those thick books filled with faintly archaic language and weird little poems first.

I swiped Fellowship of the Ring from my brother’s nightstand and started reading that very day. I admit I didn’t get into it right away. A birthday party for a one-hundred-and-eleven-year-old hobbit didn’t exactly pique my interest at twelve years old. But by the time the Ringwraiths showed up to attack our intrepid band of heroes at Weathertop, I was hooked.

For the first time in my life, I not only enjoyed and was entertained by a series of books, but I lived them. I stood beside Frodo, eyes wide with horror as Gandalf disappeared into the chasm in the mines of Moria. I trod silently through the beautiful and mysterious forest of Lothlorien. I rode on the massive branches of Ents, and triumphed in Saruman’s downfall. I swung my sword beside Eowyn and defeated the Witch-king of Angmar. I begged Frodo to cast the ring into the fires of Mount Doom. I stared solemnly out to sea, watching the ship that bore Frodo, Bilbo, and Gandalf from Middle-Earth disappear into the horizon.

And when I turned the very last page, I wept. I was certain I could never experience something that pure and soul-thrilling again.

Fortunately, though, I discovered that the bookstores had a whole section of fantasy books, full of worlds in which I could surround myself with wonder and magic. Worlds where I could discover who I really was, by living the lives of characters I wasn’t. I devoured every fantasy book I could get my hands on—books by great authors such as Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, David Eddings, Guy Gavriel Kay, Raymond E. Feist, Robert Jordan, and many more. Slowly but surely, I made my way across the speculative fiction aisle to discover the joys of sci-fi as well, beginning with Orson Scott Card’s excellent Ender’s Game.

What began as a healthy dose of sibling rivalry become an important part of who I am—not only a reader of speculative fiction, but a writer whose books will hopefully provide worlds that readers want to live in and characters they yearn to sorrow and triumph alongside.

Thanks, Dad, for bringing The Lord of the Rings into my life. And thanks to my big brother, for providing me the competitive push I needed to read it.

For the record, my brother is now a well-respected university professor with two master’s degrees and a PhD, so it turns out he was the smarter sibling, after all.

But I totally finished Lord of the Rings first.

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Megan Grey currently lives in Calgary, Alberta with her husband, two kids, and two yappy dogs. Her story “To Be Remembered” won the Editor’s Pick Grand Prize in a fiction contest for the Animism: The God’s Lake animated TV series and will be featured in an upcoming anthology. She has received two honorable mentions and a semi-finalist award for short stories in the Writers of the Future contest.

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For some people, the call to write came late in life. For me, storytelling has been a favorite pastime for as long as I can remember. Really, it has. Now, I’m not just referring to the stories that my folks read to me—though they do play a part. I’m talking about the stories I told as a kid.

That time I told my mom’s friend that I was chased around the house with a butcher knife? Much to my mom’s friend’s relief, that was storytelling.

All those times I lied to my mom so I could place the blame on one of my siblings? Yup. That was storytelling too.

All the hours I played Barbie dolls with my little sister? You better believe it.

You see, our Barbie dolls weren’t content to sit at home and mother all the My Little Ponies, She-Ra, and Rose Petal Place dolls. They had to have fantastic adventures in far-off lands. One of our favorites was a spinoff of Cinderella. First of all, since neither of us wanted to take a back seat to the other, everything was done in duplicate. That meant we had two Cinderellas and two princes (for some reason, we never doubled up on the villains). Rather than sit around and wait for the princes to find them after the ball, our Cinderellas snuck into the palace, knocked the princes unconscious with a thunder egg, kidnapped them, and had a Stockholm-syndrome happily ever after.

Now, you have to keep in mind that I was about eight years old and had no idea that what we were playing out was morally wrong. For us, it was just a fun and empowering twist on a favorite tale. The fact that it gave us an excuse to hog-tie Ken was a bonus.

When we weren’t infringing on the Geneva Convention, we play-acted/discovery-wrote stories that borrowed elements from our favorite books and movies. Those world building skills came in handy in the sixth grade when I had to write a short story for an English assignment. Most of my classmates wrote about their dog or about a stupid, annoying younger sibling that bore a strong resemblance to their own. I, however, had no interest in writing the same story as everyone else. After drawing on Barbie skills, my story ended up being about two talking flowers that were going to save the world after they finished having tea.

In high school, even though I hadn’t touched my dolls for years, I drew on those skills again for another short story assignment. This time I wrote a paranormal YA story—twenty years before it became cool, I might add.

You would think that I would have figured out by then that it was my fate to be a writer. Nope. That realization didn’t come until college. After bopping between eight different science majors, the only thing that didn’t change was my desire to minor in writing. Unfortunately, that was also around the time my life took a sharp turn for the worse. I won’t depress you with the details. Suffice to say, when life turned back around the first thing I did was sit down and write.

I love being a writer. I get to sit down with my characters—my imaginary dolls—every day and take them on fantastic adventures in wondrous places. If those adventures take a turn for the weird, and they most likely will, all the better.

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Kim May writes sci-fi and fantasy but has been known to pen a gothic poem or two. She works at an independent bookstore and dog/house sits on the side. A native Oregonian, she lives with her geriatric cat, Spud, and spends as much of her free time as she can with family and friends. She recently won The Named Lands Poetry Contest. If you would like to find out what she’s working on, please visit her blog.

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I was reluctant to share this interest with my family, because I had a sense that they would not endorse it. Little did I know that my mother had grown up watching Kirk and Spock on her family’s television—a piece of technology still mostly shunned in the 1960s by most people in the religious community where she grew up. Yes, my mother’s family was quite worldly, a fact which I am somewhat proud of.

My parents were tolerant of my interest in Star Trek, and so it was that I began catching episodes here and there on television. This was the early 1990s, of course, so the episodes I saw were reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation—and I quickly grew to love it. There is one episode that sticks in my mind. I’m not a hundred percent certain it’s the first episode I saw, but it’s definitely the one that sealed the deal. It was called “Remember Me,” a fourth season episode featuring Dr. Crusher’s escape from a warp bubble. (I’m sure that sounds like Chinese to some, but it makes perfect sense to me.)

The result is that in 1995, at the age of twelve, I wrote a full-length novel. It was set in the Star Trek universe and it was called “Warring Factions.” Oh my goodness, it is a travesty of epic proportions. I say it’s set in the Star Trek universe, but I had the unmitigated gall to invent my own new ship, and a whole new crew. Eighteen years later, I have only the vaguest recollections of the plot, but I’ve been too embarrassed to actually read it (it even has an alien character named “Hamlit,” ugh). I may never read it. A year later, I wrote a follow-up called “Nightstalker.” This one mingled my invented crew with the cast of Star Trek: Voyager, a bizarre mashup which makes precisely zero sense.

As terrible as those books are, within them are over 100,000 words, interspersed with correctly placed commas, period, and apostrophes (also a fair share of incorrectly placed semicolons). These books gave me a powerful head start, and I doubt any of it would have happened without Star Trek.

Ever since, my progression into the world of genre publishing has been characterized by an attempt to eradicate Star Trek tropes from my writing—not that they’re bad, but because they’re so very distinctive. Remember what I said about the warp bubble? Well, in my early fiction I had a tendency to write about the positronic reconfiguration of the neutrino assembly, or the baryon- particle causation effect in the warp field capacitor. Trekkers affectionately refer to this as technobabble.

But there are a lot of things that Star Trek did right, lessons it taught me and which have served me well over the years. For one thing, Star Trek, at its best, did a good job of balancing sci-fi premises with compelling character drama. After all, just about every form of fiction, whatever genre it falls into, must have a strong character component. Star Trek also taught me about immersing the story and the characters in the setting, and finding ways to actively integrate and bring to life the environment in which a story takes place.

Star Trek was powerfully inspirational to me, in more ways than I can count. It’s something I return to constantly, and it always gives me a creative boost.

Ultimately, Star Trek imbued me with an appreciation of style and setting, but when it comes to story and structure… well, that’s a post for another day. May 27, to be exact. I’ll see you then!

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In seventh grade, a classmate of mine gave a presentation on his comic book collection. I had read a comic or two prior, but had never even considered collecting them in plastic bags with backing boards to keep them fresh and unbent. That Christmas, I asked for one thing from Santa, my parents, anyone: I asked for comics so I could start my own collection.

A few months later, while strolling through the aisles of the local comic book Mecca, I first discovered The Holt. What is The Holt, you ask? Only a gnarled tree in the midst of a great forest. Within the boughs of this tree lay magically shaped rooms that were home to a tribe of elves known as the Wolfriders. I had discovered Elfquest, by Wendy and Richard Pini, and it would be the start of a long and loving relationship.

The original story introduced such great heroes as Cutter, also known as The Blood of Ten Chiefs, his trusty companion Skywise, and twisted creatures like Winnowill and Madcoil. Cuuter and Skywise, along with their small tribe, are forced to embark on a trek from their idyllic woodland home. A trek that would eventually lead them on a quest to find their true origins. The story has all the makings of traditional Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell would be proud.

The Pinis shopped Elfquest around to the major comic publishers, but received no bites other than a tiny independent comic called Fantasy Quarterly. The first issue of Elfquest appeared in that comic in 1978, but the Pinis felt they could do better. They founded WaRP Graphics and published the rest of the story themselves. Since then, Elfquest has appeared under the banners of Marvel, DC, and now Dark Horse (for the upcoming Final Quest storyline). The Pinis’ tale is one of the great success stories in self-published comics.

Not long after devouring the four large graphic novels (which dominated the top of the fantasy and science fiction section at Waldenbooks) that comprised the original story, I came across a copy of the Elfquest Roleplaying Game by Chaosium. Yes, I was a roleplayer, Dungeons and Dragons and all that. It’s my brother’s fault. You try growing up in the same room as a sibling who is three years your elder and not absorb whatever he is in to. That game opened new doors for me. Along with my good friend Dennis, we created our own tribe of elves (called the Kindred). We created our own stories that featured the likes of Stormpoint and his daughter Springmist and the tribe chief Swiftscent (Dennis’s character). All kinds of things found their way into our stories, including a clawed glove that was exactly like the one Lion-O donned in Thundercats and even a dark elf (courtesy of R.A. Salvatore’s Drizzt) we named Orebender (because he could magically shape rock and metal).

On a side note, the Elfquest Roleplaying Game had character silhouettes so you could draw your own characters. My art skills have long deteriorated, but I’ve kept the drawings of many of the Kindred, which I’m happy to share below. Looking at them is a doorway into the past and brings memories of good times with friends, both real and imaginary.

Sadly, my friend and I never wrote down any of the adventures of Stormpoint, but I still dream of their tales and parts of them find their way into my writing every now and then. Perhaps someday I will get around to chronicling their story.

To bring my story full circle (which is sort of ironic, as one Elfquest saga is titled “Kings of the Broken Wheel”), in 2012 I was fortunate enough to attend the Superstars Writing Seminar in Las Vegas. During one of the evening meet-and-greets, I sat next to one of the faculty whom I did not know, James A. Owen (who also contributed a guest post here at the Fictorian Era). We chatted for a bit about how he is a comic artist and novelist and eventually the conversation turned to Elfquest. It turned out James was a huge fan, so much so that he wrote the introduction to the second volume of the Elfquest Archives, put out by DC comics (it’s the one with the dark blue cover in the below pic).

That brief connection has rekindled my love of Elfquest and the stories I created as a child. The first thing I did after that seminar was go home and dig out Volume 2 to read his introduction. (By the way, James is an inspirational guy who has written about his journey in a fantastic book called Drawing Out The Dragons).

So there you have it. Elfquest: one of the works that has influenced me. You can read it online for free at www.elfquest.com. Maybe it will spark something in you as well.

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Martin Greening hails from Southern California and has been drawn to fantasy and science fiction from a young age. He is currently working on a fantasy adventure novel and several short stories. Martin lives in Sin City working as a IT guru by day and a dreamer of the fantastic at night. He can be found at www.martingreening.com.

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“I’m standing outside of Mindy’s restaurant alone about two a.m., thinking about nothing in particular, when it strikes me that I have not seen or heard from my friend Brenda for quite some time.”

Thus opens an email from my long-time friend, Jim. He is not inclined to banal salutations—“How’re you doing?”, “What’s new?” No, he’s too creative for that. Instead, the opening paragraph continues, inviting me into a short story set in a 1930’s gangster milieu. His cliché-riddled prose pours onto the page like a Damon Runyon tale, the protagonist—yours truly. It’s at this point that I long for a moniker more befitting 1930s New York—like Hazel Hubbahubba. Something with panache, edging on libertine.

It seems an odd place for a writer to get their start. But this is the exact moment where a sleeping writer-spirit awoke within me and took to the stage. For Jim, it was a clever way of saying “hello”; for me, it was a challenge. Within hours my fictitious riposte was complete, having dug deep into the archives of Google and Wikipedia for historical accuracy, and eluding loosely to the real protagonist’s life. Jim, I decided, would make a fine leading man. I hit “send” and giggled with schoolgirl delight.

Day in and day out, the exchange continued, the yarn growing more elaborate, cunning, and fantastical with every tap of the “send” button. The greatest challenge, you see, was building on a story that was being weaved, in part, by someone else. A plot was near impossible, the possibilities endless.

A few weeks in and I was hooked, like a fish to a worm, a carb addict to a bake sale. I found myself rushing to my laptop the moment my eyes opened to greet the morning. Had he responded yet? What would he do with the plot shift I’d dangled over the proverbial cliff the night before? Dinner burnt on the stove, the laundry piled up, and the dog sat forlorn next to me on the sofa, speculating over his self-absorbed mistress, wisely choosing to cross his hind legs rather than disturb her reverie.

Three months and fifty thousand words later a novella was born. The madness had ended. Jim and I shared a virtual high-five and then went back to our everyday. But the sun peaked over the horizon each morning and I had no reason to get out of bed. Kierkegaard said, “Boredom is the root of all evil—the despairing refusal to be oneself.” The doldrums had set in, but the writer-spirit was too fresh to be mummified just yet.

Employing the internet I began an arduous search for writer’s workshops, short story contests, anything to restore that feeling again. I wrote a novel and paid a prince’s ransom for a professional critique. I joined an online writer’s workshop pairing myself with an author-mentor, set up to teach me how to break into print. And I’ve started my own blog, a creative and fun way to flex my writing muscles.

I’m a bit of a late bloomer, I suppose. It took me a long time to recognize the voice inside my head as my imagination clambering to escape. I’ve been involved in a long-term love affair with words and have done a substantial amount of topical writing for committees, business projects, and the like, but I didn’t exercise my right to fictional storytelling until my kids were grown and life slowed to a manageable pace.

One of the most fallacious euphemisms in the world is, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I just turned fifty-one. I don’t aspire to a Nobel prize in literary fiction (although one can dream) or even a review in the New York Times. I’m just looking for an outlet for an inner voice. A voice that’s moved from vegetative to vociferous. And step by baby step, the giant awakens.

*            *            *

Brenda Sawatzky is a relatively new, unpublished writer hailing from the wide-open prairie spaces of southeast Manitoba. She and her husband of thirty-one years are self-employed and parents to five kids (two ushered in by marriage). She is presently working toward fiction and non-fiction writing for magazines and manages a personal blog.

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… what the heart wants. Right? As a kid, fairy tales were the reading fare. You know – Rapunzel (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Sleeping Beauty (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Snow White (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after), Cinderella (prince saves girl from evil witch and they live happily ever after). The list goes on. And as a kid, I thought that was the height of romance.

So, when I hit my teen years, I had a firm foundation of romantic beliefs built up. What did I read then? I read Harlequin Romances (boy and girl have struggles, fall in love and live happily ever after). My allowance money went to belonging to a Harlequin book club.  I chose the Historical club. Every month I got a box of four to six novels that were some combination of medieval romances, western romances and regency romances.  I’d start with my favorite, the medievals, move on to the westerns and then read the regencies.

I read them voraciously and then would have to wait weeks for the next box. Back then, I’m not sure if my library carried romance novels or not. I don’t remember looking.  Libraries do now though, I’m happy to say. In between, I’d read fantasies, sci-fi, biographies and whatever else my parents had sitting around. But it was all on hold once I got my new box of romances.

I’m grateful for Harlequin romances for taking up where my fairy tales left off and providing me and millions of women with stories that give us what our hearts want. Not to mention being a major market for romance writers for decades. I still read Harlequin’s and my first dreams of writing included being published by them.

Fast forward thirty years and what do I read and write? Romance. Despite three failed marriages, and the occasional jaded cynic’s hat I wear, beats the heart of a die-hard romantic. My favorite movies are romantic. My favorite storylines in other genres are the romantic ones. Even when dramas and stories end on a sad or bad note, I always think – we just need one more chapter, one more scene and this can be fixed. They can have a happy-ever-after. I know it.

Is it naïve? Maybe. But what I love about romance is that no matter the journey I go on – thrilling, sweet, harrowing, magical, tragic – I KNOW that at the end, everything will be okay, the couple will be together and all will be right in the world. Okay, it probably is really naïve. I don’t care. I’m a happier person because of it.

This may be a really strange analogy, but bear with me. Romance is like a good natural disaster flick (2012, The Day After Tomorrow, Armageddon) which I also love. They’re hopeful. They end on a positive note. And I want that.

Natural Disaster:

•  Everything is going wrong (global temperature shift/giant asteroid is about to destroy earth)
• We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (mankind joins together in global effort to save earth)
• When all is said and done, regardless of the fact that maybe the majority of mankind has died horrifically, mankind triumphs and earth survives. YAY!

Romance:

•  Everything is going wrong (boy and girl have conflict – internal and external)
• We rise to the occasion and fix the problem (boy and girl each overcome their own character flaws and whatever else is preventing their relationship)
• When all is said and done, regardless of the problems encountered, love conquers all. YAY!

This is why I write romance. My heart wants happy endings. Now though, I want modern fairy-tales where boy and girl save themselves and each other from bad choices/tendencies and work to keep their happy-ever-after  happy. That seems more realistic, less naïve and still hopeful.

What do ya’ll think?

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In my journey to be a writer, Anime has had one of the biggest effects on me. From the wayward storytelling of FLCL, to the completely epic outpouring that was Cowboy Bebop, the influence and inspiration it’s served for me has been phenomenal. In my last post, I covered how I was introduced to anime though Pokémon, and a lot of the different types of anime that exist. I’m not making a joke when I say that I’ve sampled and watched, in depth, almost every single type of anime that exists. Its presence has had a massive influence over my writing, how I perceive story, and the way my characters are presented.

When I started off watching anime, I was around six or seven years old. In those early developmental years, my common brand of story became a foreign form of storytelling. Goku (Dragon Ball Z), Heero Yuy (Gundam Wing), and Kenshin Himura (Rurouni Kenshin) were names that were just as big as Superman, Wolverine, and Batman. As I grew older, I delved more into this obsession that was slowly taking America by storm, and became one of those kids who flocked to the internet in search of anime. The why of it has to come into play at some point or another, and for me it was the storytelling. (Not so much in Dragon Ball Z, I have to be honest. Watching two guys beat one another senseless was all the story telling I needed in that one.)

In Gundam Wing, I discovered a sense of idealism that’s managed to still have an effect on me today.

“History is much like an endless waltz.
The three beats of war, peace,
and revolution continue on forever.”
—Mariemaia Khushrenada

Although I cite the quote above coming from the character who said it, the writers of Gundam Wing are the ones who put that view of the world in there. The idea of total pacifism, and the idealism behind giving your life for what you honestly believed in—no matter how old or young, really hit me. In the show, the characters portrayed were all teenagers, but they were fighting ardently for what they believed in. Honestly, my heroes were those five Gundam pilots.

Throughout anime I found characters like those young boys, like Kenshin. Hitokiri Batosai, The Manslayer. A wandering vagabond of a swordsman who, in his journey of repentance for the blood he’d spilt during the Meiji Revolution of Japan, took an oath never to kill again. In his story, this man was known as “The Strongest of the Imperialist” and had such a reputation that, if those who were hunting for him ever discovered where he was, they would take any opportunity they could to kill him. However, after he disappeared from the bloodbath that was the end of the Meiji Revolution, his past came back to haunt him. The current life he’s attempted to make for himself is invaded and he finds himself having to hold off the inner demon that exists inside him, while also defending those he’s come to love as his family; all of this with a reverse blade sword—a sword that is a symbol of his vow never to take another human life again.

In my own writing, characters like these have had a massive impact. Sure, Superman was always overly impressive, but there was a brand of awesome that came with characters that weren’t complete boy scouts. These characters knew the weight that came with having to kill, and often dealt with it in very unique ways—since there were times when killing their enemy was the only true path.

There were a couple of times where I’ve used the word “beautiful” to describe anime. The storytelling in it has left me speechless more than once, and in the case of Clannad, I was in tears. If anyone reading this has never watched a show called Code Geass all the way through, I suggest you do it as soon as possible. The idea of “destroying the world to remake the world” never meant as much as it did until I saw that show. The distorted perceptions of justice, peace, and the idea of flawed pacifism were burned into my mind by anime. I guess you could say that it introduced me to the idea of gray. Things weren’t always so black and white for the protagonist in anime, and sometimes those protagonist weren’t even heroes.

The main influence anime has had on me is that it changed my perception on how I viewed life in general. It sounds funny, but it’s true. I learned more than just story formats. In the same way that an author’s prose affected the way I write, anime’s storylines and passions had a heavy influence on me. Which is probably why some of the first stories I ever wrote was fan fiction of my favorite anime.

So, the Anime Effect has been that it was the format that made me love story enough to want to write stories. It made me want to be creative, and it led me down the path that would eventually have me writing stories of my own. In my own novels and stories, I can see hints of the heroes I had growing up, and traces of the scenes that I watched implanting themselves in my writing. Sure, it wasn’t the only thing that inspired me, but I have to admit it probably played one of the pivotal rolls. It got me writing.

Thanks, anime.

*            *           *

Stone Sanchez is an aspiring professional author who has been active in the writing community for the past two years. Currently Stone is associated with the Superstars Writing Seminars, where he records and manages the production of the seminars. He’s also worked with David Farland by recording his workshops, and is currently the Director of Media Relations for JordanCon, the official Wheel of Time fan convention. Often referred to as the “kid” in a lot of circles, Stone is immensely happy that he can no longer be denied access places due to not being old enough.

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The first books I can remember reading were books like Boxcar Children, My Teacher is an Alien, or Bunnicula. They were fun books, written for children and they were great to get me into reading. They didn’t fully capture my attention yet. They were nice distractions, but were too simple and eventually I began to crave more.

The first book I read that completely blew me away was Redwall. It took place in another world, filled with anthropomorphic animals who had to act together to save their home from outside invaders. This book, while still written for a younger audience, taught me how worlds can truly change the world and your vision of reality. These books had combat, struggles, and death. They also had bravery, honor, and true courage. Even now, I look upon the cover of this book and remember fondly the world that I would frequent so often as a child and miss my time there.

Other books came along that amazed me in other ways. Dragonlance taught me the power that magic can bring to even a frail wizard, and believe me, as a lanky teenager, such power was very alluring. I began to learn how each author could create a new existence, create so many emotions, with nothing more than a pen and paper. Dragonriders of Pern. Lord of the Rings. The Wheel of Time. They all drew me in. They let me experience power and loss, the struggle for glory and the failures that connect us. I wanted to join them in their world, and leave mine behind, and so I did the next best thing.

I began to write my own worlds, create my own rules and find my own glory. I experimented with different realities, new physical rules and boundaries. I no longer have these early manuscripts, but I’m sure they were amazing. I dedicated my life to reading and building my own world. I wrote a whole story in second-person narrative just because I was told that it doesn’t work. You, the protagonist, was pulled into another dimension to fight for your world. In the end, you failed and all was lost. But at least you got to fight, and you went down giving it your all.

I don’t remember what my grades were on those papers, but I know I didn’t get much support in those years. As I’m sure is evident, much of my world resolved around existing and creating worlds that didn’t exist. Parents and teachers seem to fear these other worlds and believe they are depths that should be avoided. I began to gravitate toward other hobbies, such as computer and science. I would receive more approval from my teachers for a little program I wrote in a few hours than I would from a story that took me weeks to write.

Approval is a strong motivator, and I still wonder where I would be if I had received more of it for my writing. I still enjoy computers and science, and I make a great living at it, but I never lost my love for fantasy. The two loves would merge every now and then as I wrote games and interactive stories on the computer, but in the end I let that side of me sleep. I would play games, read books, and live in others world, but only let mine exist in memory.

Eventually, after finishing school and leaving the military, I was able to look back on my life and try to determine who I was and who I wanted to be. You would think that such a reflection should happen when you’re younger, but society doesn’t really allow for that. I’m lucky that the job I chose still happens to be one I enjoy, but those fantasy worlds that I created in my head still lurked in the background and I missed exploring them. The people on those worlds demanded resolution, and I needed to give it to them.

I took up worlds that I had created as a child and rebuilt them. I began to create new worlds, entirely new planes of existence. I jump back and forth between novels, but it works for me. Now I write for myself, and I write the world that needs to be written at that time. One of these days, soon I hope, I’ll get to the point where I’ll be happy enough to submit one of my novels to the world. I understand that they may never be perfect, but I love these characters that exist in my worlds. I care for them, rejoice in their triumphs, and cry with their sorrow. They are a part of me, and their world is real to me. Their story needs to be told, and I’m the one to tell it.

My hope is that someday some kid will read it, and it will show them just how magical the world can really be. Perhaps it will the catalyst to create their own worlds, their own stories that need to be told. And perhaps, even if they don’t get the support they needed at the beginning, they’ll soon realize that they don’t need to please anyone else. The stories exist, and they just need to tell the tale.

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When I sat down recently and started thinking about which science fiction and fantasy inspired me to seriously pursue a career in writing genre fiction, I thought the answer was a simple one. But as I actually began putting it down on paper, “the tale grew in the telling” as they say. Nuances I’d nearly forgotten woke as I fired up their neurons. So forgive me in advance if this turns into a bit of a ramble.

Like many if not most of us, I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction as a kid. My mom read Lord of the Rings to me after I’d watched the wonderful Rankin-Bass adaptation of The Hobbit and asked about that last line: “Then you’ll see that the story of the ring is not over, but is only beginning.” (Thanks, Mom!) This was followed by The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, most (but admittedly not all) of The Chronicles of Narnia, and others.

We flash forward many years to winter break of my first year of college, the moment where I finally caved and jumped on The Wheel of Time bandwagon at the behest of two friends. After devouring everything up through The Path of Daggers (the last book that was out at the time), I switched gears and began with A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones to you HBO neophytes). More recently the fantasy uber-series I’ve found most challenging has been The Second Apocalypse, by R. Scott Bakker. Those three series’ collective use of intricate worldbuilding, foreshadowing, dark themes, and multiple viewpoints certainly influenced my writing style.

But the thing that actually got me started writing in the first place took place in between childhood and college. On the verge of entering my teen years, I began reading the Star Wars “expanded universe” novels. I eventually went on to read a great many of those (stopping only when I realized they were never going to end), but the ones that had the most impact were the Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn and the Jedi Academy Trilogy by Kevin J. Anderson.

At that time, my mom had probably noted that for several years I’d eased off reading in favor of video games (video games being a particular weakness and a habit I haven’t managed to kick even today) and so knowing I was a huge Star Wars fan she shrewdly picked me up the first of Zahn’s trilogy. Well, technically she picked up the third book at first, but we quickly sorted it out after a bit of confusion.

I was blown away and instantly hooked (thanks again, Mom!), quickly devouring both trilogies and looking for more. Not only did it get me back into heavy reading, but I quickly realized that I liked the best of the novels even better than I liked the movies, because the books delved so much deeper into story and characterization. My friends and I quickly began incorporating details from the expanded universe into a Star Wars role-playing game of our own design. We took turns as dungeon master, and that was where I got my first taste of how much fun it was to create narrative mysteries for other players to try and solve.

Shortly into high school, my friend Bryan and I began taking turns drawing crude stick figure comics. Each of us came up with one “character” and the comics basically involved increasingly outlandish ways for the characters to kill each other, our own personal Itchy and Scratchy from The Simpsons. But eventually we grew bored with the pen-and-paper carnage, so our characters teamed up and began having narrative adventures (always wielding lightsabers, of course). Then in our sophomore year of high school, we started passing a three-subject spiral notebook around between classes, trying our hand at our own fiction, which quickly morphed into Star Wars fan fiction (set a thousand years in the future from the original trilogy, natch).

It was… not great fiction. Now liberated from the limitations of our crude stick-figure art, the one-upsmanship that had permeated our comics ran rampant. Mostly we would use our turn to either invent a mystery to confuse the other author (perhaps not the best collaborative technique) or each try to paint the other into a narrative corner from which escape would be impossible (an even worse collaborative technique). It marked the beginning of writing purely for my own enjoyment.

We never did finish that first story. Bryan moved away halfway through high school and we saw each other infrequently after that. I toyed around with finishing it anyway (and two others, because all books simply belonged in trilogy form to my inexperienced eyes) but eventually just dropped it. But I still have both that notebook and the comics. In fact, writing this piece spurred me to pull them out of storage and look them over. The prose is even worse than I remember, but I’m trying to take that as a sign of how far I’ve come since then. And as bad as it is, it still puts a smile on my face. I feel like that’s the most you can ask for from your writing.

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My grandfather and my mother are avid readers, so I came by that honestly. Writing, however, is a different story.

I have a tendency to get sick. I mean really sick. If everyone else in the house has a sniffle, I have a cold. If they have colds, I have the flu. If everyone has the flu, I’m at the doctor’s. The problem with getting that sick, that often, is you get bored really stinking fast.

Being a child in the 70s, I didn’t have video games until Pong came out, and I could play that for only so long. Television was only worth watching for about two hours a day, and then only on some days (except Saturday morning cartoons!). Books, though… they worked 24/7.

One particular illness sticks out in my memory. I was in fifth grade and down sick with what I was told was the “Russian Flu.” I was miserable sick—except when I was reading. When I was reading, I was in another world. I could literally forget about my own problems! I would be so engrossed, the rest of the world ceased to exist. That was a godsend.

That was also my first real introduction to the idea of a series, where the story continued on into the next book. The world didn’t come to an end when I closed the book, there was another one waiting!

I read Patricia A. McKillip’s Riddle Master Trilogy, Piers Anthony’s Xanth Trilogy (back when there were only three), a trilogy collection of Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter books, and three or four of Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx series. When I ran out of new books, I re-read The Hobbit.

It was quite an eclectic mix, and I read them all in a little over a week. And then I went looking for more. Everything I could get my hands on. Up until that time, I had been a “reader.” I had read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in fourth grade. But now, after doing so much reading, so intensively, I had become addicted. I had become a biblioholic. I had to have more!

I raided my mother’s bookshelves and then headed for my grandfather’s. I came away with armloads of Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Kenneth Robeson, Frank Herbert, and more.

Some sucked me in, others not so much. I was searching for authors with a specific talent—the ability to make me forget I was reading a book. I was actually trying to recreate what I had experienced while I was ill.

Yeah, I read the things the other kids were reading. The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the like. They were good, but… they didn’t transport me into another world the way I wanted.

I wasn’t in the game to read about little problems with kid brothers, or mysteries about missing toys. I wanted the Hero’s Journey. I wanted books that let me see Star Wars in my head. (We couldn’t just buy it and watch it anytime we wanted back then. Not to mention that, if I remember right, Star Wars was around $100 when it came out on VHS five or six years after theatrical release, and a brand new book was only $3.50.) I wanted books that let me live a different life.

And I found them. I found a lot of them. I started with authors I already knew could make a movie behind my eyes, and I got everything I could by them. I read Piers Anthony’s older sci-fi stories, and then I followed all of his new series as they came out. I followed Alan Dean Foster’s Pip and Flinx adventures all the way until 2009 when he finally wrapped it up. I’m still waiting for David Gerrold to finish The War Against the Chtorr series. (I’m not holding my breath, though…) Along the way, I found Robert Asprin’s Myth series, Lawrence Watt-Evan’s Ethshar books, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, among others.

I worked sixty hours a week while attending college full-time, and I still made time to read. I would exchange books with co-workers. I gave away my copy of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy just to convince someone to read it, and then I went and bought myself another. I did that three times.

After I graduated, I carried my book du jour to work with me and read it during my lunch hour. At first my new co-workers laughed at me, but by the time I left there were close to a dozen people doing the same thing.

Why? Because books are magic. A well-crafted book made by a talented author will cast a spell over a reader and transport them to a new place, a different time, another life.

That’s what I was looking for when I was sick. A different life. And those wonderful authors gave it to me, even if it was just for stolen moments at a time. They gave it to me. And as I lay in that bed so many years ago, a thought drifted through my mind, a thought that stayed with me the rest of my life: I wanted to return the favor. I wanted to write something that could bring as much joy to those authors as they were giving me.

Ideas began bouncing around in my head after that. When I worked physical labor, I would entertain myself by thinking up stories. When I drove long distance, I would stay awake by imagining new places, new worlds, and new people. Eventually, I found that nearly anything would give me a story idea.

And soon, very soon, I will finally move beyond my apprenticeship and craft a story that repays my heroes. I will inspire the next generation, and honor the previous. I will write because I read, and it was wonderful.

*            *            *

Sam Knight refuses to be pinned down into a genre. If the idea grabs him, he writes it. Once upon a time, he was known to quote books the way some people quote movies, but now he claims having a family has made him forgetful, as a survival adaptation. He can be found at www.samknight.com and contacted at sam@samknight.com.

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One day I found a big cardboard box and incorporated it into my pony games.  Sunbeam, the unicorn, thought that as the only unicorn in Ponyland (translation: the only unicorn I owned so far), she should be the queen of the ponies.  When the other ponies disagreed, Sunbeam hatched a plot.  She asked Snuzzle if she would like to be a rock star, and set up a concert (with the cardboard box as the stage).  All the ponies came out to see the show.

Surprise!  The show was a trap.  The cardboard box flipped ninety degrees and trapped the other ponies inside.  Sunbeam proclaimed herself queen, with Snuzzle as her assistant.

Snuzzle was sad.  She had wanted to be famous, not to hurt anyone.  Sunbeam got angry and threw her into the pit (box) as well.

So Sunbeam was queen.  But she was queen all alone, with no friends.  Worse, with all the other ponies in captivity, their special powers (indicated by their symbols) stopped working.  Soon, Sunbeam’s sun power had turned Ponyland into a desert.

Desperate, Sunbeam freed the other ponies, and stepped down from her position as queen.  The other ponies’ powers caused the flowers and clover to grow again, the stars to shine again, the rain to fall again.  And, in time, the ponies would learn to forgive Sunbeam for her mistake.

(Not bad for a six year old, hm?)

The next day in school, my class was given an assignment to write and illustrate our own books for a project called Young Authors.  I knew right away what I wanted to do.  I was so happy with the plot I had made up for my pony game that I decided to write down the story.  Entitled “Sunbeam’s Sad Show,” it was chosen as one of the best three in the class, and I was able to attend a special writing conference with children from other schools.

It took me ten years to discover that what I had created was something called “fan fiction” and that I was far from the only one using characters from toys, cartoons and books to make my own stories.  It took me another ten years to learn that those people who were lucky enough to be paid to create the official tales of licensed characters were called “tie in authors.”  But it took very little time at all for me to recognize that telling stories in writing was not that different from acting out stories with my plastic figures.

Writing, at its best, is still play to me.  I create a world and populate it with characters.  I set up scenarios and let them play out, watching to see what my characters will do, how they will interact with one another, how they will face the challenges ahead of them, whether or not they will succeed, and what will happen to them then.  My goal is to create a tale as compelling to my readers as the world of the little ponies was to me, long ago.*

(*Full disclosure time:  Anyone with a collection of 300+ little ponies is still pretty darn compelled by that world.)

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